Comments on political violence, terrorism, small wars, etc.

Maldives

Welcome to your Situation Update, a new feature from Insurgentsia that runs weekday mornings. The scope of these posts will cover the globe’s various conflicts in the realm of irregular warfare (the term “irregular warfare” being like the word “irregardless,” i.e. nonsensical and overused).

The weather forecast this morning is overcast with a 20% chance of misdirected outrage. I hope that helps you wherever you are located as you read this.

President Trump wants a military parade modeled after the one on Bastille Day in France. The desire is apparently being taken as a presidential directive and is “being worked at the highest levels of the military.” On Twitter, people reacted with shock that the nation might consider fetishizing the military in a grand public spectacle unironically just days after the Super Bowl.

Public attention shifts from Syria despite nearly daily airstrikes on civilian-populated areas and massive death tolls. Over 80 people were killed on Tuesday in Syrian government air and artillery strikes. With little hope for a ceasefire, civilians wonder why they even try to film and report the human rights abuses they witness. To them, it seems the international community no longer cares.

And if that makes you depressed, don’t read this about Libya, where no plan to by the Trump Administration to bring stability to the nearly governmentless country means that Russia has decided to back its own horse in that race. After meeting with whom the U.S. recognizes as prime minister in December, the Trump administration has left Libyan affairs mostly up to the United Nations. Meanwhile, Russia has backed former general and strongman, Khalifa Haftar, including brokering weapons for oil deals and printing money for the Haftar-allied government.

Not so tranquil in the Maldives, known as a small but beautiful island country in South Asia, where the president appears to have issued a state of emergency and purged the supreme court and opposition.

New imagery shows Chinese development on reclaimed Islands in the South China Sea. China has long insisted the buildings were not for military purposes, but new photos show the runways, ships, and supporting buildings in new detail.

Turkish border towns feel repercussions from Syria campaign. Rockets and mortars from Syria’s Kurdish-held areas are not uncommon in Syrian border towns like Reyhanli. “This is happening every day now. I’m just waiting for it all to be over,” said a Turkish mother with her two children who were shopping for groceries while explosions thudded in the distance.

Meanwhile, France accuses Turkey and Iran of violating international law in Syria. The move is noteworthy because France and Turkey are both NATO allies. The Turkish foreign minister is on his way to Iran for talks about Syria’s future.

And Syria accuses Israel of airstrikes on government positions. There is a lot going on there.

The U.S. encourages NATO to establish long-term training mission in Iraq like the one it has had in Afghanistan for a decade. One senior NATO diplomat commented to Reuters, “This looks suspiciously like another Afghanistan. Few allies want that.”

Whoops, those tanks were ours. As many as nine American tanks provided to the Iraqi military ended up in the hands of Iran-backed militias says a new report.

Saudi living in Oklahoma arrested for al-Qaida ties. The man attended flight school in the United States and his fingerprints were found on an application to join al-Qaida from 2000 recovered in Afghanistan.

The VA motto is sexist says the head of the largest Iraq and Afghanistan veteran group. The motto, a quote from Lincoln, reads “To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan.” Today the VA must care for whoever shall have borne the battle, not just him.

This concludes your Situation Update. Questions may be posted in the comments section but answers are not forecasted. To receive these in your inbox daily, use the follow button on the sidebar (web) or below (mobile). Your next Situation Update will be Thursday, February 8th, 2018.